Giving In To Culture: The Adventist Gender Error

Those Adventists who are against ordaining women have one argument totally wrong. It is their go-to argument when speaking out against those who seek to lift women up to their Godgiven stature.

What is this argument?

It is that supporting women’s ordination is giving in to culture, capitulating to cultural norms and pressures instead of abiding by a “plain thus saith the Lord.”

Yet long-held bias and entitlement have twisted the truth through this co-opted an argument that doesn’t belong to them. The time has come to turn this argument around and to set the gender record straight.

Here is the manifest truth: Giving in to culture is the opposite of what some Adventists have thought, and the time has come for us to rethink. It is pandering to the cultural norm that has kept women subservient, exploited, and misused for thousands of years and, indeed, still does so in many parts of the world. Paul’s teaching on the fellowship of all believers is just as counter cultural for much of the world today as it was when he first said it. Unfortunately, this includes too much of the Christian world.

Yet, by God’s grace, this is changing. Many are coming forward to champion the cause of women and hold accountable those who would abuse them. The time is coming, and now is, when the truth can no longer be cloaked with misconception and misappropriation of scripture. The dawn is breaking in Adventism on the issue of gender, and all darkness must flee.

Those who continue to abuse women in violation of Galatians 3:28 and who stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the true biblical position of women are the ones capitulating to culture on this issue. They are the ones who are giving in to culture—an odious, women-bashing cultural norm that has been around for far, far too many millenia.

It is past time to reclaim this co-opted cultural argument and bring it back into scriptural and historical perspective. It is past time to hold the feet of those who would twist culture and scripture to their own ends to the fire of doctrinal integrity and common sense!